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AT THE MOVIES; A Throwback To Hitchcock

How do people whose lives have been devoted to quotidian pursuits like socializing and maintaining normal jobs suddenly excel at plotting, or foiling, immensely complex murders?

That was the sort of question Alfred Hitchcock asked, as he explored the dark forces even ordinary people could call upon when threatened. His movies often achieved their nightmarish quality not just by creating insanely persistent killers, but also by showing how the pursued were transformed.

''A Perfect Murder'' aims to be a throwback to the old master in that sense. Loosely based on Hitchcock's ''Dial M for Murder,'' it is a thriller in which the twists have mostly to do with the changing faces of the characters, who start out as seemingly ordinary people. The film, starring Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow, is thoroughly modern in how it exposes the baser personalities behind each character.

''A Perfect Murder'' is being released by Warner Brothers, which has been struggling for a hit for more than a year. Studio executives are excited about the film, hoping it will end the bad luck. The release date has been moved up, from the fall to its current date, June 5.

In a funny way, the film achieves its effect by using what seems to be the ''wrong'' director, Andrew Davis (above). Mr. Davis's greatest successes have been action films like ''The Fugitive,'' as well as movies with martial arts experts like Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris. ''A Perfect Murder'' is not an action film; indeed, more than half of it takes place in a 10,000-square-foot mock-up apartment the director had built in Jersey City, where the characters talk and plot.

But another of Mr. Davis's strengths is realism, and he underscored in an interview how he used that to make the plot twists in ''A Perfect Murder'' believable and therefore more surprising. He said he worked hard at building up the details that add up to a regular life.

''I wasn't a kid who studied Hitchcock, to tell you the truth,'' Mr. Davis said. ''What I loved was the realism of a Kubrick or a Sidney Lumet, and I used that here. These are just regular people until the world starts to unravel.''

Mr. Douglas is back to playing a role he has excelled at, a stylish villain. Ms. Paltrow is his elegant, sophisticated wife, whose yearnings for deeper emotional satisfaction lead her to an affair with a downtown artist. That shaky love triangle sets each character on a perilous journey in which Mr. Douglas discovers his wife's secret and then attempts to persuade her lover to kill her.

The surprise is how the wife plots her revenge, and it is such a surprise that Mr. Davis said he is still experimenting with two endings.

''We went for a safer, solid ending, but our audiences in tests are more sophisticated, smarter than that,'' he said. ''We're finding they don't like a neat Hollywood ending, so we're thinking about adding one more surprise, one more twist. Hitchcock might even have done that.''

On the State of Intimacy

When ''Carnal Knowledge'' was produced in 1971, the hatred of Jack Nicholson's character for women, and Art Garfunkel's aimless wandering in the desert of love, looked frightening and pathetic rather than inevitable. There was a sense that these characters had gotten on a wrong path, but that there was still a right path somewhere out there.

Neil LaBute (above), whose misogynistic film, ''In the Company of Men,'' stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy last year, has now made a new film, ''Your Friends and Neighbors,'' which he considers a ''Carnal Knowledge'' for the end of the millennium. But this time, viewers will have to ask, as they watch the bleak gropings of his characters, whether there is some glimmer of hope, a right path toward intimacy. Mr. LaBute said that there is, or might be, but that it is unavailable for the characters in his movie.

In the film, to be released by Gramercy Pictures on Aug. 28, Mr. LaBute has transformed the sexual dysfunctions of a group of friends into a grim essay on the state of intimacy in our culture. In his world, anger and isolation seem inevitable, and the worst outcome is often the likeliest. Mr. LaBute said that Ben Stiller, who plays Jerry in the movie, a professor who initiates a liaison with his best friend's wife, then is unable to perform in bed, once joked on the set, ''Neil, if you can make it worse, you do.''

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Mr. LaBute said: ''My view is there has to be some balance out there. There's too much Hollywood in movies. To me, these characters seem so real. People are just so complex.'' He was quick to add that he liked humor and injected some into his new film, but not enough to change the unhappy experiences of his characters.

Besides Jerry, there's his girlfriend, Terri (Catherine Keener), who despises the fact that he likes to talk when they make love, and eventually leaves him for a woman, Cheri (Nastassja Kinski), who, at least at first, says nothing when they have sex. There's also Barry (Aaron Eckhart), who tells his friends he prefers masturbation to sex with his wife, who says she just wants to be held.

But the main character is Cary (Jason Patric), a doctor who is brutal and brutally honest, telling openly of the hatred he unleashes on men and women with whom he has sex.

Mr. LaBute said that he was not pessimistic about the prospects of real communication and intimacy in relationships, but that he was presenting a kind of cautionary tale. ''There's a sort of catharsis in watching characters like this, I believe,'' he said. ''This is saying, or lets people say, 'At least I'm not that bad.' ''

He added that he felt no obligation to offer the happier conclusion. ''I only have one set of answers,'' he said. ''People have to watch this and figure it out for themselves.''

A Glenn Close Dream

Glenn Close has never been one to play it safe, taking on a wide range of parts, in the musical ''Sunset Boulevard,'' in the period drama ''Dangerous Liaisons'' and in the children's film ''101 Dalmatians.'' But now she is beginning a project that, she said, is an even bigger risk, and the realization of a longstanding dream. She will star in and be a producer of a television remake of ''South Pacific.''

Musicals remain popular on Broadway, but in movie theaters they have all but disappeared, even though studios are addicted to remaking former classics. Audiences tend to demand films that are faster-paced and gyrate to a rock-and-roll pulse, and that involve greater realism than soldiers and nurses bursting into song.

Ms. Close (above) said she hoped the new ''South Pacific'' would spark renewed interest in the genre by movie studios. The film is being made by Hallmark Entertainment, and will appear on ABC. ''I recognize that no musicals have worked'' for some time in movie theaters, she said, ''but I think it's going to happen. It certainly could if we do this well. It may happen by increments.''

Any child of her generation is likely to have grown up endlessly hearing recordings of ''Bali Ha'i,'' ''There is Nothing Like a Dame'' and ''Happy Talk'' in the musical, written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, based on stories by James A. Michener and first filmed in 1958.

Ms. Close said that those were her earliest musical memories and that she has wanted to perform in a remake for years. But, she said, the film will be grittier and will focus more on the war, as well as using modern production technology.

''We're going to muscle it up,'' Ms. Close said. ''In our version, you'll see nurses nurse and acts of courage.'' Referring to one of the characters, she added, ''You'll see Luther on a bulldozer under sniper fire.''

Filming may not begin for some months, so in the meantime Ms. Close will take off in another direction, as she has for much of her career. She will leave Friday, she said, for Mississippi, where she will star in ''Cookie's Fortune,'' a comedy being directed by Robert Altman. Rather than being a singing, lovesick nurse, she will play an eccentric sister in a small Southern town.